Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Shame on us and some of our customs where we treat our women folks with less than dignity. A widow is still kept away from participating in weddings of even their sisters. This, female foeticide, triple talaq, and the female genital mutilation are horrible practices we have allowed. We have to start speaking up.

Banished for menstruating: the Indian women isolated while
they bleed

Women in parts of India are sent to basic
hutsoutside their villages during their periods, as the stigma of
menstruation proves hard to overcome

Poornima
Javardhan, 25, felt dread and trepidation as she got ready to spend five days in
a gaokor – a hut outside her village where girls and women
are banished during menstruation.

“During
the rainy season, it is all the more difficult to stay in a gaokor because water comes inside and sometimes the roof
leaks,” says Javardhan, who lives in Sitatola, a village in central India’s
Maharashtra state. Each month, custom dictates that she must stay in the
thatched hut on the edge of a forest, sometimes on her own, or, if she’s lucky,
with another woman.

Since
the huts are considered public property, no one takes responsibility for their
upkeep. Gaokors lack a kitchen as women who are menstruating are not
allowed to cook; those staying inside rely on family to bring them food and
other items. Women usually sleep on
the floor with just a thick sheet for a mattress, which is folded and used as a
cushion during the day.

Given
the location of the huts, it is not uncommon for wild animals to make an
appearance, and there have been reports of women dying from snakebites while
staying in gaokors.

“We
visited 223 gaokors in tribal areas and nearly 98% lack even a proper
bed, leave alone electricity and other basic amenities. Most of
the gaokors have temporary bathrooms made with bamboo,” says Dr Dilip
Barsagade, the founder of local NGO Society of People’s Action in Rural Services
and Health (Sparsh), which recently brought
the practice to the attention of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

The
practice of banishing women and girls is most prevalent among the Gond and
Madiya ethnic groups. The Gonds are the largest indigenous group in central India and hail from the states
of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

“I
don’t like staying in a gaokor … there is nothing to do and I cannot
play,” says Sangita Kumra, 14. “Luckily, so far I have never stayed alone, but I
am scared that I might have to. My friend once had to stay alone, and the very
mention of it would make her cry. My mother tells me that this is our custom and
we have to do it.”

Satisheela
Haridas, 23, from Sitatola, is resigned to her fate. “I feel extremely bad that
for five days I cannot even touch the utensils of my own kitchen. But what can
we do? We have to follow our tradition and customs,” she says. “Most of the time
we just sit and talk [while in a gaokor] because there is nothing else
to do.”

For
five days I cannot even touch the utensils of my own
kitchen

There
are two gaokors in Sitatola, home to about 20 families. Although there
have been incidents of harassment, women are generally left alone because they
are considered impure while they have their periods. There have been moves to
improve the conditions of the gaokors, but not to end the practice.

“We
have brought gaokors closer to the village and are planning to put beds
in them,” says Haridas Namdev Kumra, 25, a member of the village’s Gram
Panchayat, a local self-governing body.

Elsewhere,
local administrators have selected 100 gaokors to supply with basic
amenities such as water, and cupboards with plates and cups.

“We
have a school where we are teaching 350 girls and we try to educate them that
menstruation is a natural process. We believe that everything is linked to
education,” says Jagan Bhau, from Lok Biradari Prakalp, an organisation
that runs social projects in Maharashtra.

Sparsh
is also trying to address the problem by increasing women’s awareness of health
and hygiene. Barsagade says the organisation has run 12 workshops in remote
villages as well as working with local government-sponsored childcare centres;
it also visits gaokors to speak to women about menstruation. “Because
it is a sensitive topic, we try to educate them about health and hygiene without
mentioning gaokor,” he says.

Social
media campaigns have been launched to challenge the stigma and taboos around
menstruation. In April, the Kachra Project launched the
#periodforchange campaign, which encouraged discussion of the topic.

Recently,
celebrities joined another campaign – #HappyToBleed,
launched in response to a comment from the head of a Hindu temple, who said
women would be permitted to enter the temple once there are machines to detect
if they are “impure” or “pure”.

The
hope is that the campaign will help to change attitudes. Arpita Bhagat, founder
of the Kachra Project, says: “An extremely small section of modern Indian men
are now open to talking about it [menstruation] in general conversation –
otherwise, it remains a taboo and a
stigma.”

Monday, December 21, 2015

It's a fascinating
read, a long but worthwhile reading. What was done to them in Uganda was
shameful, but they made a greater come back with each difficulty they faced.
Indeed, the Gujarati people have developed unmatched
entrepreneurial skills in them and it is worth studying. One item that touched me was, “Most fundamentally, those Gujaratis who turn to business say
that they are constitutionally unsuited to working for other people. For them,
the best way to work for yourself is to run your own business, “to take your
destiny in your hands” – Though I am not a Gujarati, I relate with them.

Let me share my story, which I never wrote before. Right after my MBA, I was
interviewed by Omni hearing Aids, one of the fastest growing companies in the
early 80’s, I had an incredible management background, I had reached to be a Deputy
Controller with Fluor Arabia on a 5.2 Billion dollar project, however I was
interviewed 5 times, then finally, the Chairman from NJ came to interview me.
His question was “we are an all white company, how will you manage as head of
the organization? “ I produced my record of managing a large number of diverse
employees... I was not hired. I don’t think anyone can get away with that
now, but discrimination existed then.
That was the last time I worked as an employee. I said heck with working
for someone, I will be on my own. I have
always remained fiercely independent. Now, my son has opened his own law firm in
partnership with his former boss, I am proud of him.

Each of us finds some connection in this article.

Mike Ghousewww.TheGhouseDiary.comwww.MikeGhouse.net # # #

Secrets of the world’s best business people

AS BRITISH imperialists were trudging through African jungles to secure their newly conquered empire, some of the empire’s subjects were also roaming far and wide, under the cover of the Union flag. One was Allidina Visram, from Kutch, in what is now Gujarat state in India. He arrived penniless in Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) on the east African coast in 1863, aged 12. He opened his first small shop 14 years later, and soon afterwards spotted his great opportunity. He opened a store at every large railway station along the 580 miles of railway track being laid down through Kenya to Uganda in the early 1900s, providing supplies to thousands of railway workers. He then opened more stores at Jinja on Lake Victoria.

Flush with success, Visram was later joined by another Gujarati, Vithaldas Haridas. He arrived in 1893 and was, if anything, even more adventurous than his mentor; he stomped 24 miles through the jungle to the small town of Iganga, where he started his own shop. More followed. These were the beginnings of some of the larger fortunes to be made in colonial Africa.

Gujaratis have never been put off by small matters such as distance or temperature. Nowadays they form one of the most prominent immigrant communities in Canada, and at the other end of the Earth they constitute a large proportion of the 155,000 immigrants of Indian origin in New Zealand. And at all points of the compass in between, from Fiji to Britain, from Myanmar to Uganda, they have built flourishing communities. It may even be true, as one Gujarati organisation has claimed, that the only countries where they have not settled are “those which are very small, undeveloped or are merely small islands without much business opportunity”.Business, indeed, is the principal business of Gujaratis. Everywhere, they are to be found running businesses, from corner-shops to hotels, from tech start-ups to some of the world’s largest conglomerates. Like the Jews, Chinese, English, Scots and Lebanese, they have come to form an impressive global commercial network. In proportion to their numbers (about 63m live in India, and there could be anything from 3m to 9m abroad), they could even claim to be the most successful. They bestride entire sectors of the global economy and have been at least partly responsible for the rise and fall of nations. Their influence on some advanced economies is now substantial.

Consider America. Having arrived in numbers from the 1960s onwards, Gujaratis now run about a third of all its hotels and motels. Furthermore, this was achieved mostly by just one group, essentially an extended family, the Patels, who hail originally from a string of villages between the industrial cities of Baroda (or Vadodara) and Surat (see map). Like other South Asians, they highly value degrees in medicine and engineering. But they have the added knack of turning a degree into a business opportunity. Thus they own almost half (12,000) of America’s independent pharmacies (as well as one of the biggest chains in Britain, Day Lewis). There are thousands of Gujarati doctors in America, and they are quicker than most to start up their own practices. Bhupendra Patel, for instance, studied medicine in Baroda before coming to America in 1971. He set up a practice four years later, bought his own building in Queens, a borough of New York City, in 1978 and soon had 30 or so doctors working for him. His classmates were certainly impressed; out of 120 of his peers, 90 came to America in his wake.

These stories point to a couple of outstanding characteristics. Most fundamentally, those Gujaratis who turn to business say that they are constitutionally unsuited to working for other people. For them, the best way to work for yourself is to run your own business, “to take your destiny in your hands”, as Russell Mehta, the head of Rosy Blue, a large diamond processor, puts it. For these people, enterprise is virtually a cultural obligation, and has always earned the most respect. Starting a small corner-shop is seen as more impressive than holding a mid-level management job in somebody else’s company.

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental

For many Gujaratis the point of acquiring knowledge is to attain practical goals, particularly business goals. The Gujarati word vediyo, meaning a person who studies the Vedas, the ancient Sanskrit texts that constitute the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, has come to mean a “learned fool”. Ethnic-Indian Americans have applied their practical knowledge to Silicon Valley; they are responsible for about a quarter of all startups there, and a quarter of those are thought to be Gujarati.

Around the globe, they have come to wield huge influence in the diamond business. An impressive 90% of the world’s rough diamonds are cut and polished in the Gujarati city of Surat, a business worth about $13 billion a year, and Indians, predominantly Gujaratis, control almost three-quarters of Antwerp’s diamond industry. Like the motel owners, the great majority of diamond processors come from just one community, almost all of them tracing their origins back to one otherwise-obscure city in the north of Gujarat state called Palanpur.

Unsurprisingly, given their success abroad, they have been at the forefront of India’s own recent economic surge, too. The three wealthiest Indian businesspeople—Mukesh Ambani, Dilip Shanghvi and Azim Premji—are Gujarati. With just 5% of India’s workforce, Gujarat produces 22% of the country’s exports. Reliance, one of India’s largest private conglomerates, is Gujarati-owned. The industrial centres of Ahmedabad and Surat dominate India’s synthetic textile sector. One of the world’s biggest denim factories is in Ahmedabad, which is also home to some of India’s pharmaceutical giants. All this has produced handsome revenues for the state’s coffers, and with it the sleek new roads that persuaded many Indians to vote for the former chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, as prime minister in 2014.

As the state of Gujarat accounts for about a fifth of India’s coastline, perhaps it was inevitable that its peoples should be merchants and travellers. Its position also helped: it is well-situated for the Persian Gulf and Africa, and routes to South-East Asia. Gujarati traders have been recorded on the African and Gulf littorals since before the tenth century, and extensive trade with the Arabs partly accounts for the strong Islamic influence on the state, which was founded as a modern administrative unit in 1960. It consists of three main regions: the Kutch, a largely arid, sparsely populated area now abutting the border with Pakistan; Saurashtra, the westernmost point; and central Gujarat to the east, the main industrial belt. The graceful dhows that bore most of the Gujarati trade are still built by hand at Mandvi, on the coast of Kutch.

Under the influence of Muslim traders, and Persians invading from the north, many Hindus were converted to Islam. They now constitute the Muslim sects of the Bohras, Khojas and Memons. This was an important part of the development of a commercial ethos in Gujarat, as after conversion to Islam these communities were relieved of the Hindu restriction on “crossing the sea”. It was not until 1905 that religious leaders lifted the social penalties against this among the two leading Hindu business organisations. One Hindu group, the Patidars, many of whom have the family name Patel, had mostly been farmers, but as family landholdings were subdivided among the sons, many were pushed into trading in agricultural products such as tobacco instead.

The spirit of capitalism

As well as the accident of geography and the virtues of religion, other significant ingredients in the rise of Gujarati mercantilism were the institutions known as majahans, the equivalent of European guilds. These developed in the early Mughal period, in the 16th century, and they regulated trade and settled disputes within the various trading communities, such as the cloth or grain merchants. The mahajans provided a system of self-regulation, saysS. P. Hinduja, a professor of sociology at Delhi University, but they were also “multi-ethnic and multi-religious”, binding together the Muslims, Hindus, Jains and others into one commercial class.

Whereas one religion, Protestantism, has often been associated with the rise of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Gujarati capitalism was much more a fusion of influences. Ethnic and religious diversity became a source of strength, multiplying the trading networks that each community could exploit. Pragmatism and flexibility over identity, and a willingness to accommodate, perhaps inherited from the mahajans, are strong Gujarati traits, argues Edward Simpson of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Gujaratis have been adept at remaining proudly Gujarati while becoming patriotically British, Ugandan or Fijian—an asset in a globalised economy.

In the 10th and 11th centuries they developed a distinct code of ethics for doing business. Again, religion played a role, especially with the Jains. Jainism was originally a protest movement against Brahmanic traditions and the privileged classes within Hinduism, rather like the Protestant revolt within Christianity, says Mr Hinduja. Jains are pacifists and vegetarians. The injunction against harming any creature, especially insects, ruled out tilling the fields. In a largely agrarian society, that left few ways to earn a living other than trade or finance.

Jain preachers drew up rules for business practice that emphasised non-violence and honesty. One such preacher, Hemchandracharya, determined that as peace was essential for trade, so merchants were at all times to avoid strife and provocation. Indeed, keeping a low profile has been another Gujarati characteristic. The region’s politicians, such as Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah—the founder of Pakistan—and Mr Modi, are renowned throughout the world, but its entrepreneurs often remain invisible, which is exactly the way they like it.

Trust and honesty remain essential to Gujarati-dominated industries. Mr Mehta, himself a Jain from Palanpur, whose diamond company has a turnover of $1.8 billion and offices from Antwerp to Tokyo, says that, despite the size of the business, it is still “all based on handshakes and words, with no contracts”. In order to make the system work, he explains, diamond merchants prefer to deal with “the people they trust”—this usually means a group within the Gujaratis, in this case their fellow Jains from Palanpur. This is a big part of the reason why the subgroups of Gujaratis, such as the Patels and the Jains of Palanpur, have each congregated in one trade, and why most Gujarati businesses, except the very largest, remain run by families.

Traditionally, most of the finance to start a business comes from within the family, or at least the community. This brings other advantages. “We don’t have to deal with government too much, and mostly not with the banks, as most money comes from families,” says Dinesh Navadiya, the head of the Surat Diamond Association. “So there is little scope for corruption.”

Business failure is also largely handled within families. Gujarati entrepreneurs are risk-takers, but they know that the family network provides a safety net. Even so, failure carries a stigma that may never be wiped clean, especially if the person who has failed is suspected of extracting excessive profits for selfish reasons. Mr Mehta has helped bail people out, and watched as the bankrupt sold everything to repay debts. “It could be really nasty,” he says. “All the creditors, including their own family, would verbally abuse them; sometimes it was violent.”

Retail empire

“Ethical business practices based on fair trade and honest dealings gave Gujarati traders a reputation of being trustworthy,” write Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, two historians of the region. So when the Portuguese, Dutch and then the British started arriving in India from the 16th century they used Gujaratis as their principal trading partners. The headquarters of the British East India Company was originally at Surat. It was the Gujaratis’ relationships with the East India Company, and later the British crown, that were the biggest influences in shaping their contemporary trading empire.

They expanded by following the Union flag to the farthest corners of the British empire, encouraged to do so by the “open door” policy whereby traders and merchants set up shop in its booming entrepots. Hundreds of thousands emigrated to east and southern Africa in particular, but also to Malaysia, Burma, Singapore and beyond, as well as more obscure territories such as Fiji. When the occasional colonial official cared to lift the bonnet on Queen Victoria’s empire, he usually found Gujaratis running the engine. One such was Henry Bartle Frere, consul on the east African island of Zanzibar, who observed in 1873: “We found [the Gujaratis] monopolising whatever trade there might be, spending and keeping their accounts in Guzeratti, whether in small shops, or as large mercantile houses. Their silent occupation of this coast from Socotra to Cape Colony is one of the most curious things of the kind that I know. It has been going on for forty years but I had no idea till I came here how complete their monopoly has become.”

It was not only the trading opportunities that enticed Gujaratis abroad; most left their homeland out of desperation, to escape devastating famines, plague and cholera. But whereas other Indians arrived in the outposts of empire to labour on sugar plantations or build railways, Gujaratis such as Allidina Visram, the shopkeeper in east Africa, opened the stores that serviced the labourers. So commercially driven were the ethnic-Indian Ugandans, of whom about three-quarters were Gujarati, that at the peak of their success, in the mid-20th century, they contributed about a fifth of Uganda’s GDP despite numbering only about 100,000 out of a population of 8m. One of their number was the singer Freddie Mercury, born on Zanzibar in 1946.

More Thatcherite than thou

Gujaratis enjoyed similar success in other colonies of the British empire, notably Kenya and South Africa. Memons, in particular, prospered in Burma, trading mainly in teak, rice and tea. The most successful was the very wealthy Sir Abdul Karim Jamal, knighted by the British in 1920. Originally from Jamnagar in Kathiawar, the “King of Rice” even had a street named after him in Rangoon (now Yangon). Considering how well the Gujaratis did out of the empire, it seems only natural that a Jain from Palanpur, Sanjiv Mehta, should now own the East India Company itself. He snapped up the moribund company in 2005 and has opened a posh store bearing its name in London’s West End. It sells fine crockery, traditional marmalades and, inevitably, tea. To guilty Britons the company is redolent of imperial exploitation, but to Mr Mehta it is more of a brand “known all over the world, the Google of its age”. The world’s first joint-stock company has come round full circle.

The intimate connection with the British, however, came at a price. The Gujaratis were identified as little more than colonial satraps by indigenous Burmans, Ugandans and others. So once the British left, they were often targeted by the first post-independence politicians, asserting their nationalist credentials.

In Burma (now Myanmar), the military regime that took over in 1962 nationalised all foreign businesses, forcing hundreds of thousands of Indians out of the country. In Uganda, in 1972, the deranged dictator, Idi Amin, abruptly gave the country’s 60,000 South Asians, mostly Gujaratis, 90 days to leave. The consequence, as elsewhere, was precipitous economic collapse. Amin’s cronies sequestered the Gujaratis’ businesses and ran them into the ground. In 1997 a new Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, came to Britain to ask the exiles to return and rebuild the country. The generals who governed Myanmar never did so, to their country’s enduring cost.

Stripped of their money and possessions, Gujarati refugees from Uganda came to Britain to build their fortunes a second time over

But Uganda’s loss was Britain’s gain. Stripped of most of their money and possessions by Amin, about 27,000 Indian refugees, mostly Gujaratis, arrived in Britain and set about building their fortunes a second time. Dolar Popat arrived in 1971 as a 17-year-old, slightly ahead of the main influx, with £10 ($24 at the time) in his pocket. He spent £6 of it on lodgings with an Irish family in Kilburn (the only people who would take a non-white tenant), got a job as a waiter in a Wimpy restaurant for 25p an hour and worked so well that his boss started to give jobs to other Gujaratis.

By the time the bulk of the Ugandan Asians arrived, Mr Popat had bought a three-bedroom house in Wembley. He sheltered 25 of the refugees. He took night courses in business studies, completed a part-time accountancy course and in 1977 bought his first corner-shop, with a sub-post office that gave him a fixed income. Three years later he set up a finance company providing mortgages (half of his customers were Gujarati), and soon after bought his first care home. Hotels and much else followed.

Now worth about £70m, he was given a peerage by the Conservative government in 2010. “That’s how we fight prejudice and raise our living standards, through hard work, education and enterprise,” reflects Lord Popat today. Even the Conservatives, many of whom opposed the influx of Ugandan Asians, were eventually forced to acknowledge that the values of Gujaratis like Lord Popat were if anything more Thatcherite than their own. Norman Tebbit, a prominent minister in Margaret Thatcher’s governments, wrote to Lord Popat in 2012 that while he had opposed the Gujaratis’ arrival in 1972 he now acknowledged that they had “become integrated into the community and uphold British values and standards which have become rather less respected in some parts of our indigenous population”.

Will Gujaratis around the globe continue to enjoy the same success in the future? The state their forebears came from has seen an uptick in sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in recent years, particularly in 2002, and this has, to an extent, damaged the religious and ethnic tolerance on which so much of their commercial ethos was built. There is a risk that divisions in India may, in time, spread to the diaspora. Some fear, too, that in the age of “knowledge economies” their utilitarian approach to learning might become a disadvantage; it is Bangalore and Hyderabad that have pulled ahead in India’s latest high-tech businesses. But, as the Gujaratis like to point out, they do the business, not the tech. As there have been gaps in the market during the past millennium, so there will be gaps during the next millennium—and Gujaratis will be there to exploit them.

The Kings of the past with a few exceptions were like the terrorists, they had no religion. Whether they were Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs are other Kings, their primary interest was securing the resources for themselves, invade and annex the next door state, loot their wealth, rob their women, take their children as slaves... No Maratha should be blamed for the plunder Maratha armies did, and no Muslims today should be responsible for Ghazni's plunders... like the author says, the sons of bitches did not do it for religion, it is their greed that made them do these things.

Of course there were good kings too, not because they were Muslim, Hindu or Christian, but because they were good people.From time to time, it is good to read critical writers like Aakar Patel, he challenges the average mind to think.

I think I’ll write about Bajirao Mastani today. I have not seen the movie, nor do I
intend to (only one Gujarati makes the cut as director of watchable pap and that
is neither Sanjay Leela Bhansali nor Sajid Nadiadwala, but Manmohan Desai, a
true master). However, I have read Bajirao Mastani’s reviews and one of them
said to my alarm, that the film “explores the romantic side of 18th-century
Maratha general Bajirao Ballal Bhat, who fought and won 40 battles against the
Mughals with an aim to create a unified Hindu kingdom or Akhand
Bharatvarsha”.

Whoa,
hold it right there. First, the Marathas only ever wanted a Marathi kingdom for
themselves. It was not unified, hardly akhand and never Hindu. The Marathas were
despised by other Hindu rulers, and disliked by non-Marathi Hindus as well, as
history shows us.

Bajirao
and the Marathas campaigned for one thing alone, and it was called chauth. It
meant a fourth of all revenue from other kingdoms, no matter what the faith of
king and subject, and at collecting this Bajirao and the rest were
efficient.

Maratha
extortion caused Jaipur’s Ishwari Singh to commit suicide in December 1750. Sir
Jadunath Sarkar (the Manmohan Desai of our historians) writes of what followed
in his four-volume classic, Fall of the Mughal Empire: “On 10 January, some
4,000 Marathas entered Jaipur… (and) despising the helpless condition of a king
propped up by their arms, seemed to have behaved towards Jaipur as a city taken
by storm. Suddenly the pent-up hatred of the Rajputs burst forth; a riot broke
out at noon, and the citizens attacked the unsuspecting Marathas. For nine hours
slaughter and pillage raged.”

The
Marathas first invaded Bengal in 1742. Of their behaviour, the New Cambridge
History of India tells us that “all authorities, both Indian and European are
agreed”. A contemporary writer calls them “slayers of pregnant women and
infants” and Sarkar has recorded their gang-rape of Hindu women, inexplicably
stuffing the mouths of their victims with dust and breaking their arms and tying
them behind their backs. The only Indian to try and protect his subjects against
the Marathas incidentally, was the Mughal governor Ali Vardi Khan. So much for
Akhand Bharat. But I must say that the Marathas did not behave differently from
any other ruler or warrior community, and the idea of a unified Hindu sentiment
exists only in the imagination of those who get their history from the
movies.

What
the Marathas did striking north from the south, the Sikhs did in the opposite
direction (they called their extortion ‘rakhi’, or protection, and it was 10%
for all Indians). It is undeniably true on the other hand that the Marathas were
originals.

It
is important for this romance between Bajirao and Mastani that she knew how to
ride well because there were no palanquins and howdahs travelling with the
Marathas as there were with the Mughals.

The
Marathas were the Mongols of South Asia, always on horseback, and with no
infantry and no giant camp behind. Even the scavengers who followed them around,
the bargis, rode. When the monsoons ended, the Maratha army, about 40,000 men,
rode across the Narmada and Tapi, the border that marked off the Deccan, and
attacked ‘Hindustan’.

Shivaji
always organised this on a particular day: Dussehra (Bal Thackeray continued
this tradition of declaring war on other Indians with his fiery Dussehra
speeches). After the death of the peasant king, power passed to the Brahmin
peshwas of whom the best was Bajirao. As the Mughal fighting ability and
finances (the two being interchangeable) declined after Aurangzeb, the Marathas
began penetrating increasingly into hitherto unknown territory in the north. It
was the young Bajirao, then only in his teens, who determined, rightly, in one
of these raids that the Mughals had gone soft and could no longer defend the
realm.

From
this point on, the Marathas began holding ground instead of just taking their
horses back. It is why we see Marathi names like Holkar and Scindia and Gaekwad
in parts of India they do not naturally belong. Everyone grabbed what they could
and held onto it, there was no Hindu or Bharat angle to any of it.

Bajirao
had one good battlefield victory, against Chin Qilich Khan, first Nizam of
Hyderabad. It was a positional win, meaning the arrangement of Bajirao’s force
gave no space for Khan and he gave up without much fighting. Like chess. A
similar situation came in Panipat, when Abdali positioned the Marathas out.
Bravely, the Marathas chose to fight and were slaughtered. Scindia
(Jyotiraditya’s ancestor) and Holkar, it may interest the reader, fled the
field, and the man who helped Abdali with supplies ensuring his win was Ala
Singh. Abdali rewarded him by making him Maharaja of Patiala, Captain Amarinder
Singh’s ancestor.

Can
you spot any Hindu or nationalist angle to any of it? No, because it exists only
in the movies.

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REAL ESTATE IN INDIA

INDIAN HEROES

These are the men and women from among Hindus, Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jews, and other traditions that are deeply committed to the idea of One India and one people acknowledging the uniqueness of each one of the Indians.

Their work brings people together, their effort is to restore harmony among Indians unlike some lost souls who are hell bent on pitting one Indian against the other.

Lord Krishna had said, whenever the negative forces become stronger in dividing families and disrupt peace and harmony, he will emerge among them to restore sanity, the same idea is reflected in Quran, that God does not deprive his goodness to anyone and sends a peacemaker to every community and nation. After the founding fathers of the nation, these are our real heroes restoring dharma – the righteousness. Dharma is when people get along, mind their own business, live their lives and let others live theirs. God has created all of us and respects each one of us is the highest form of worship.

I salute them for their work and they come from all walks of life. They see you as an Indian and nothing but an Indian. They believe every human should be free to eat, drink, wear or believe whatever he or she wants in the pursuit of their happiness.

Please share stories of such Indians who have made efforts to build a cohesive India, an India where no Indian lives in apprehension, tension or fear of the other.

INDIAN HEROES - NEW FROM 12/20/17

PATRIOTISM

Two of India’s dangerous trends: Misplaced Patriotism and intolerance towards different points of view.

The real heroes of India are those who relentlessly “criticize” the government because they do not want their government to falter and make decisions that will mess up the social structure of the nation. They keep the government rascals on their toes. After all, they are elected to serve us not the other way around. The real heroes rise the nation for the common good of all.

What do the Chamchas on the other hand do? They wear a false badge of patriotism and to them patriotism is oppression of those who differ, and war mongering. They cannot handle criticism of government, they are yes sir, yes sir I lick your chappals. They bring down the nation by keeping their man at helm in a bubble giving him or her false assurance that everything is alright.

I hope the Prime Minister wises up and invites and honors those who criticize him, they are the real supporters of him by reminding him from falling into the pit. He should welcome all those who criticize. He needs to defend the rights of such heroes. The Indian Citizens on the other hand need to make a conscious effort to support those who criticize the government, BJP or Congress or any one.

The test of a successful civilized nation is when every man and woman of India can breathe, eat, drink, wear and believe whatever the hell she or he wants to believe.

UPRIGHT BUREAUCRATS

These are the public service heroes; officers who go against their political bosses to do the right thing for India, i.e, every Indian. We will be developing the list as we go forward. You can send in your entries to MikeGhouseforIndia@gmail.com

UPRIGHT BUREAUCRATS

ABOUT MIKE GHOUSE

Mike Ghouse is committed to his life mission of building cohesive work places, communities and nations. His work is for the Indians and Americans where each one of the 322 million Americans should feel secure without apprehension or fear of the other.

He is one of the 5 people in the world who is actively pursuing research, activism and teaching the subject of Pluralism. Just Google and find a tremendous amount of work on pluralism in religion, politics, society and culture. Mike defines Pluralism as an attitude of “respecting the otherness of other” and accepting the God-given uniqueness of each one of us.

He is a pluralist, thinker, writer, activist and a speaker on Pluralism, Interfaith, politics, Islam, human rights and foreign policy including India and Israel-Palestine. He is a news maker, interfaith wedding officiant and a community consultant and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.

Dr. Ghouse has appeared in over 300 National TV shows and is a frequent guest with Hannity and Varney shows at Fox News along with others. He has over 1000 hours of Radio Shows of which 700 were dedicated to interfaith and pluralism. Over 3500 articles have been published of which a 1000 were on politics, foreign policy, sports and movies, a 1500 for interfaith and pluralism matters and a 1000 plus on Islam. In addition Mike has conducted workshops on Atheist to Zoroastrian and every one in between.

Mike is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. His work is at www.Centerforpluralism.com and www.WorldMuslimCongress.org

Welcome

We are proud of our heritage - a multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-regional and multi-linguistic society, where we have come to accept and respect every which way people have lived their lives. For over 5000 years, India has been a beacon of pluralism - it has embraced Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Baha’i and Zoroastrianism to include in the array of the indigenous religions; Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. India led the way to the freedom movement, since 1947 every country has been liberated from colonialism. Indian democracy is a shining example to the world, where the people have peacefully transferred the powers. Indians are inherently secular and economically capitalistic. They believe in "live-and-let-live" life style, which is the essence of capitalism.Through the years we have expressed the highest degree of maturity on handling extreme situations; the more divergent opinions we hear, the larger our heart grows, the bigger our embrace would be and we can cushion more differences. Let’s continue to honor the concept that there is always another side to the story, as finding the truth is our own responsibility.I am proud of my heritage and am proud to be an Indian-American. Please join me in the discovery of India on a daily basis, as time permits and share the wealth of knowledge you have on this forum.

DallasIndians@yahoogroups.com is the information exchange center for the Indian community living in the Dallas/ Fort Worth Metroplex. You can join by sending an email to: DallasIndians-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com